This week marks 179 years since the first publication of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in 1847, something which will be celebrated in Great Britain with little more than a small London theatre production. The occasion may be being noted more enthusiastically in China, where the book has been newly added to the national curriculum for 14- and 15-year-olds, with the strange aim of indoctrinating schoolgirls into becoming compliant brood-mares for the demographic good of the Chinese Communist party. [...]Western commentators have derided the CCP’s actions, mocking their totalitarian and prescriptive attempt, ‘to help [children] establish a value system’ by reading a 200-year-old text and interpolating utterly irrelevant political messages into it. But are 21st-century establishment authorities here in Charlotte Brontë’s original homeland of England really any different?Brontë Parsonage Museum, the registered charity which manages the family’s old rural rectory home, is currently pretending Jane Eyre – and all the sisters’ literary output – is not about love in the time of communism, but love in the time of colonialism. Running until January, the museum has organised a special exhibition, ‘The Colonial Brontës’, trying desperately to link the sisters to the subjugation of Africa. How were they linked to it, though? Did they own shares in sugar-plantations, or have a secret Jamaican slave hidden in the attic? No, explains the museum’s website, they wrote some stories on little bits of paper when they were children [...]When writing their own schoolgirl stories set in the imaginary colonies of the Glass Town Federation, the girls made use of racial stereotypes about its likely inhabitants – such as Charlotte’s disgraceful aspersion that they would probably have black skin: ‘The Chief was quite black and very tall; he had a fierce countenance and the finest eyes I ever saw.’ If you can’t cope with extreme language like this, the Museum website contains the following ‘CONTENT WARNING: This page includes excerpts from written works containing outdated terminology.’ Presumably, that means ‘black’ being written without a capital B.If you are still dubious that a 13-year-old writing a story set in Africa featuring a black man is highly relevant to the sins of British colonialism, the museum’s curators explain how, ‘The 18th and 19th centuries in England were more racially diverse than many audiences realise.’ Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, for example, is described in the book as ‘a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect’, but the orphan’s mysterious origins in Liverpool, then a major slaving-port, have long led some literary scholars to speculate that he may really have been black or mixed-race. The museum, however, has a different, more demented, theory: maybe he was actually based on Frederick Douglass?Where’s the museum’s evidence? There doesn’t seem to be any.But, if visitors want to know more about the Brontës’ ‘connections’ to slavery, the museum suggests buying the following books from its gift shop: Our Island Stories: Ten Walks Through Rural Britain and Its Hidden History of Empire; The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums and Why We Need to Talk About It; and Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga, none of which are about the Brontës at all. When you go to the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, do you reckon the staff there try to flog you a copy of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for no reason, or does this kind of thing only go in one direction?Attempts to link the family to slavery know no bounds, as demonstrated by the academic behind the current ‘Colonial Brontës’ exhibition, Professor Corinne Fowler, back in 2017:‘The Brontë sisters’ school was just a few miles from the Dentdale home of a notorious slave-owning family called the Sills. The Brontë sisters knew about the Sills family, who worked more than 30 enslaved Africans on the grounds of their [foreign] estate.’One of Fowler’s previous books is called Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural Britain’s Colonial Connections, and she has previously sat on the ‘Rural Racism’ taskforce, whose remit evidently extended back into the distant past when almost everyone in the English countryside was white. Except Frederick Douglass, obviously.If the Chinese really want to know how to go about twisting the meaning of classic books for naked political ends, they should commission Professor Fowler to set their curriculum. (Steven Tucker)
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.
If you could only reread one book for the rest of your life, which would it be?The Staying Alive poetry collection by Neil Astley, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë or Tao Te Ching by Laozi – I’d maybe even cheat a little and do The Complete Works Of Shakespeare. [...]Are there any book-to-screen adaptations you’d absolutely love to be part of?Jane Eyre! Which is happening, and I’m unbelievably excited about. (Abby Allen)
The famous Bronte sisters’ links to Co Down are to be brought to life in the former church near Rathfriland where their clergyman father preached as a young man. (Claire Dickson)
02. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne BrontëEven more shocking than her sister’s work, Jane Eyre, Anne Brontë cemented herself in literary history with this novel about a single mother’s surprising independence among Victorian society. You’ll love this book’s equally moody setting in a mansion that seems to take a life of its own if you’re already a fan of Austen’s Northanger Abbey. And with quite an unusual main character and subject matter for a novel of this time, this work is perfect if you’re looking for something a little more unconventional than a typical ingenue caught in a boy-meets-girl. (Eliza Monts)
'Emily' (2022)One of the most underrated period dramas currently available to stream on Netflix, Emily follows the brief yet breathtaking life of English writer Emily Brontë as she fights societal expectations on the journey to writing her masterpiece, Wuthering Heights. Emma Mackey stars as the titular character, for which she earned a nomination for Best Lead Performance at the 2022 British Independent Film Awards.A stunning portrayal of one of the most important and all-too-short lives in literary history, Emily will provide the perfect historical escape this weekend. The film was Australian actress Frances O'Connor’s directorial debut and starred the likes of Amelia Gething, Alexandra Dowling, Fionn Whitehead, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen alongside Mackey. Don't miss Emily on Netflix. (Jake Hodges)
However, the film’s brilliantly melodramatic title doesn’t tell the whole story. Wuthering Heights: House of the Damned is a po-faced reimagining of the story as a supernatural slasher, picking and choosing bits of the story to put the novel’s overarching narrator Mr Lockwood, through hell. If only it was Edgar Allan Poe-faced. While the idea’s intriguing, playing it entirely straight leaves it wanting.The new owner of Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood (Ross Townsend-Green), has an unfortunate first meeting with the owner of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff (Sky Cheema), and through a series of unfortunate incidents (missing horse, dog bite, classic moors fever) he ends up spending more and more time there overnight. It’s a dreamy if window-breaking encounter with a phantom wrapped in billowing veils that piques his interest. But the increasingly delirious Lockwood’s attempt to discover the recent history of the Heights and the fate of Heathcliff’s son soon merges with bloody visions of the past, and more frequent appearance of a mysterious woman in grey…Remember the craze for zombie parodies of classics? Well now it’s phantoms with a fondness for sprinting behind you whenever you turn around. Terrorised throughout is Townsend-Green’s hapless squire, who really isn’t cut out for buying a large estate on the Moors. The actor really puts his all into it, screaming, sobbing, quaking and putting his foot in it from the moment he rides up—with the air of Gary Oldman’s Dracula swanning around London—to when he ends up… Well, that would be spoiling the extraordinary denouement a long 1 hour 45 minutes later.This Heights is huge—seriously massive—apparently with ghosts in every room, ready for Lockwood to stumble in on. Townsend-Green’s game performance is the only source of amusement in the story’s reframing, which could have been as giddy as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol or an all-out comedy. Ultimately, it struggles under the weight of its ominous, solemn tone and its repeated reliance on ghostly jump scares. You don’t expect Heathcliff to break out in a tap dance, but Cheema, who certainly looks the part across two timelines compared to some castings, has to hit out serious lines one after the other until things go impressively off the rails at the end.There may be a cheer at the fate that befalls Nellie Dean, one of literature’s most infamously unreliable narrators, but many other opportunities are missed. The gruff manservant Joseph’s constant exasperation that Lockwood has to stay yet another night is gold, but not capitalised on at all.Just as Fennell’s take chose the themes it could concentrate on (sex and then a bit more sex), so writer Liana Failla and director Becca Hirani have a particular focus. They find a way to tie up the book’s themes, albeit with a big dose of ocullty-weird, and it is a pleasant change to see an ‘adaptation’ take interest in the mirroring second generation of the novel’s characters that so often don’t make it to film.‘You can catch anything on the Moors, sir’, opines Hareton (like most other characters, a little off from their traditional representation) to Lockwood at one point. There’s no danger catching a lick of pace, sadly. You can see the strong bones of the idea, where Failla ties neatly into Brontë’s plot points and (not to everyone’s taste) takes definitive advantage of some of the book’s most enigmatic scenes. It’s brilliantly shameless how a little extra slant of horror is added at both ends of the ol’ devil’s life. If only, though, the treatment had a bit of ingenuity in its scares and humour.Sorry, Heathcliff, but it’s not an essential sacrifice this Halloween. (Matt Goddard)
Speaking of the tangible romantic experience, an adaptation that manages to subvert this was Wuthering Heights. Although the original was not written with romance as its main plot; Fennell’s adaptation gets away with unconventional scenes and sexual exploits as the reimagined setting and costumes presents a theatricality that borders on avant-guard.Unlike in The Deal, the characters become less human than they were in the source material. This ends up making the eccentric promiscuity digestible as they are no longer the characters from the book. The movie was controversial, which means you either loved it or hated it, and lovers of Brontë’s original work usually align with the latter. [...]Romance adaptations are horrendously difficult to perfect as directors must observe the current climate and sacrifice elements of the book that no longer reflect healthy boundaries. Depending on how they are directed, and whether they make it over the top, such as in Wuthering Heights to justify it, or remove the dubious content entirely, like in Off Campus, the product will not satisfy all those who consume it. (Lottie Latimer)
West Lane Baptist Church, HaworthOctober 24, 10am - 6pmVoices from a Yorkshire MoorFrom the Brontës to The Book of Bogs, moors, bogs and marshes have given rise to some of our finest writing. This is a day to revel in those words...The audience are invited not just to listen but to respond by creating their own Book of Bogs: a handmade pamphlet containing words, drawings and found materials. Afterwards, participants will be invited to share their work through an open mic.Events run from 10am: you can join us for all or part of the day.Expect a friendly and accessible event where you can be as active and creative as the performers. There's also a warm welcome to audience members who prefer to sit quietly and listen!10am-12pm: Voices from the moor: a lively morning workshop with Clare Shaw and Anna Chilvers.1-4pm: readings from the UK and Ireland’s best contemporary eco-poets: Jane Clarke, Michael Malay, David Morley, Harriet Tarlo, Victoria Gatehouse.4-5pm: Open mic5pm: Big Bog DiscoAnna Chilvers (Bluemoose) and Clare Shaw (Bloodaxe) are popular writers and facilitators who have authored and edited 14 books between them - including poetry, novels and creative non-fiction. In 2025, they co-edited “The Book of Bogs: Stories of a Yorkshire Moor and other Peatlands” (Little Toller), featuring over 43 leading writers of ecology, nature and place. Book of Bogs is a model for what happens when poetry and ecology meet — when words help us look more closely at the natural world, feel it more deeply — and take action to defend it.
Purists will be pleased to hear that Reid’s adaptation [of Sense and Sensibility] is a fairly faithful one – Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights this is not. (Katie Cunningham)
Sélectionnée dans la première liste du prix Goncourt, JE de Lilia Hassaine propose une relecture post Metoo de Jane Eyre.Comme l’avait fait l’autrice britannique Jean Rhys dans La prisonnière des Sargasses il y a tout juste soixante ans, la journaliste s’intéresse à « la folle » du cultissime roman de Charlotte Brontë, cette première femme que Rochester cache dans son grenier et qui va l’empêcher d’épouser Jane.Dans ce quatrième roman au style très victorien, elle nous embarque avec elle dans la triste histoire de la belle Jamaïcaine.Chez Lilia Hassaine, si Antoinette Cosway (rebaptisée par son mari Bertha pour convenir à son nouvel environnement anglais) a perdu la raison, c’est à cause de Rochester, pervers narcissique, prenant plaisir à détruire l’être aimé, à observer son anéantissement, à souffler le chaud et le froid, à sans cesse manipuler.Le récit explore les rapports de pouvoir. Le rapport homme-femme bien sûr, mais également celui sur lequel reposait l’esclavagisme durant cette première moitié du XIXe siècle quand se multipliaient les révoltes, mais où le racisme perdurait malgré les fraîches lois abolitionnistes.Comme cet extrait cité d’un dictionnaire médical de 1812 : « Le Créole a beaucoup de facilité pour tout, mais de génie pour rien »… (A. W.) (Translation)
One of Carson’s most famous literary works is “The Glass Essay,” a long-form lyric poem that blends a personal narrative of heartbreak with critical commentary on Emily Brontë. Carson intertwines a constructed narrative of a devastating breakup with Emily Brontë’s oeuvre and life. In doing so, Carson incorporates critical analyses of Brontë’s life and observations from her sister, Charlotte, to comment on heartbreak, isolation, and literature as an emotional outlet. [...]Brontë is intertwined with the speaker’s grief in a way that at first seems out of place—how does this author from the 19th century relate to the speaker’s breakup? Eventually, readers understand that the speaker identifies with Brontë, feeling that her liminality and isolation after being abandoned are turning her into Emily Brontë. At the end of the poem’s second section, “SHE,” the speaker asks: “What meat is it, Emily, that we need?”The speaker does not just allude to Brontë as a kindred spirit, however. The poem’s unique perspective—what the Nobel committee calls “bold” and “inventive”—comes from Carson’s combination of this intensely personal narrative with literary analysis. The speaker quotes unnamed critics (likely inventions by Carson to represent a general argument within the literary world rather than any one scholar), using interpretations of Brontë and her life to deepen her self-understanding or refute a claim with her own experience. In one stanza, a disparaging critic wonders why Brontë longed for liberty when her home life was satisfactory. The speaker responds that imprisonment takes many forms and describes her own childhood, showing how she reads Brontë’s poetry through her own life. (Eden Bridge-Hayes)
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Music by Paul GordonLyrics by John CairdStage Director... Samantha Mishima FriedmanConductor and Co-Music Director ... Richard KosowskiCo-Music Director ... Timothy McReynoldsWith Anna Grace Martin, William Little.October 22 to October 24, 7:30 PMTownsend School of Music -- Fickling Hall, Macon, GABe swept away in this romantic adaptation of Jane Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre. Follow the story of our independent and resilient heroine as she leaves the cruel world of the orphanage to become the governess at Thornfield Hall. At Thornfield, she falls in love with her brooding employer, Edward Rochester. Jane uncovers Rochester’s dark secrets and must decide what is best for her own interests. Will their passions bring them together or will Jane be left alone?
Jane speaks her mind,” said Samantha Mishima Freidman, D.M.A., assistant professor of voice and director of opera. “She doesn’t let anyone get away with anything. She’s not afraid to tell people they’re wrong, which at the time was kind of a big deal, and she was sort of ostracized for it. Mercer has some pretty big personalities, and we have some ladies in the opera program who are strong and amazing, and I thought (this show) would fit really well with the people we had.”In addition, “Jane Eyre” is a particularly fitting production for the fall season.“It’s a perfect October show. It’s got a sort of spooky aesthetic to it,” said William Little, MUS ’28, who plays Rochester. “All of us have worked really hard. The songs are just gorgeous. We’re starting to sound really great, and I’m very excited to put it on for people.”Anna Grace Martin, MUS ’27, plays Jane Eyre and found the role to be a welcomed challenge.“Jane Eyre is a very complex character. In a single scene, she can go through all the stages of grief. Being able to kind of feel all of her joy and pain has really been a challenge, but it’s been really rewarding to be able to work through some of her inner workings,” said Martin, a music education major.Friedman said she was surprised at how much the students stepped up during rehearsals.“Anytime I have asked them to get to the next level, to push themselves a little bit further, they have pushed themselves even further than that,” she said. “So every day it’s exciting to come back and to see what new ideas they bring.”Friedman is assisted in the production by co-music directors Tim McReynolds, D.M.A., Helen Wall Rich Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano, and Richard Kosowski, D.M.A., chair of vocal studies and professor of music. Martin said it’s been rewarding to work with these faculty and her fellow cast members.“They’ve been so understanding with all of the very complex aspects of the character and helping me think through how she thinks,” she said.Friedman hopes the audience feels the message of forgiveness in the show.“The musical does a really good job explaining that forgiveness and tying it throughout. It’s one of the hardest things to do in your life, to truly forgive and let go, and I think that if people see that, they will leave changed in the best way possible,” Friedman said. (Isaac Linen)
“Glass, Irony & God”The six pieces in Carson’s second collection are clear, sharp, splintered, and luminous. It includes her single most arresting poem, “The Glass Essay,” a chilly, desolate account of the end of a love affair, told by a speaker who believes that she is “turning into Emily Brontë / my lonely life around me like a moor, / my ungainly body stumping over the mud flats with a look of transformation / that dies when I come in the kitchen door.” The poem’s anguished meditations on love’s savagery and isolation are designed to draw blood. (Merve Emre)
Brontë Parsonage in HaworthLiterary types, you need to head to Haworth. Here, with stunning views of the Yorkshire moors, is the home where the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – wrote their novels including Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It’s now a museum displaying the world’s largest collection of bits and bobs from their lives. Think: handwritten manuscripts and first drafts of novels, but also the more delightfully mundane, such as pebbles collected by Anne, locks of the family’s hair, and Emily’s christening mug.The chance to journey back in time and pretend that you, too, are a Brontë sister, doesn’t end with the house and museum. The Brontë Society, which looks after the parsonage, will happily hand over maps for walks among the moors, so you can quite literally follow in their footsteps. Walk into Haworth town to find the Brontës’ birthplace and the church where the family, except for Anne, is buried. (Ellen C Scott)
One of the most memorable moments from my senior semester of college was seeing Emerald Fennel’s “Wuthering Heights.” I watched it on Valentine’s Day at Silverspot Cinema with my sister and six of her friends, and I liked it way more than I should have.Ever since I was little, I remember hearing, “The book is always better than the movie.” Up until I saw “Wuthering Heights,” I used to believe it too.When I read Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” my sophomore summer, I remember feeling underwhelmed. In my Apple Books review, I gave it three stars; I had hoped that book would shake my soul, and it did not. That was really sad for me, given how much I had enjoyed her sisters’ works — Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Anne Brontë’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”The week after watching the newest adaptation of Wuthering Heights was really stressful for me. It pained me to admit to all my friends that I had enjoyed the 2026 film more than the 19th century tome. I mean, I really loved it. I was sobbing so hard that people were turning around and pointing. I wasn’t the only one — a couple other girls in my row were similarly shaken. I won’t name names, but you know who you are.When it came out, the “Wuthering Heights” adaptation was very controversial. Some described it as “hollow,” while others said it was worse for Emily Brontë than tuberculosis. Most critics had at least one thing to say: it’s nothing like the book.The thing is, definitives are hard. Saying a book is “always” better than the movie is both false and highly unproductive. It’s a kind of snobbery; people who say this either want to feel smart, or they want to make you feel stupid. To me, preferences and absolutes should not be allowed in the same room. [...]After watching “Wuthering Heights,” I went around to all my friends saying it was probably the best movie I’d ever watched and I really believed it at the time. Now, I see that my reaction had a lot to do with how my life looked last spring. I’m putting off rewatching it, because I’m scared I won’t like it as much the second time.Knowing our preferences aren’t fixed or absolute, it can be hard to make choices. How can you know what you’ll want in three months? 10 years? You’re asked to decide things now which are permanent — even when you know your preferences are fleeting. (Anna Garziera)
Cathy and Heathcliff from Wuthering HeightsMargot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have made doomed romance look extraordinarily glamorous in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Think extravagant period gowns, romantic corsetry, dark tailoring and a suitably brooding expression. The perfect couples costume for those who appreciate a little gothic drama, and a thoroughly dysfunctional love story.
Fielding's eclectic collection of jumpers has become a staple of the beloved Channel 4 baking show, and in Tuesday night's episode (October 20) he rocked a blue knit depicting a series of women in red dresses dancing around the moors.The design is by Australian-based label Wah-Wah, as part of its collaboration with award-winning artist Tara Booth, in homage to musical icon Kate Bush.Noel has a history of paying tribute to the British singer, whose debut single 'Wuthering Heights' – inspired by the Emily Brontë novel of the same name, which was of course also adapted for the big screen this year – topped the UK chart in 1978, when the song-writer was just 19 years old.As part of the BBC's Let's Dance for Comic Relief, which aired back in 2011, Noel Fielding took to the stage to perform his own rendition of Kate Bush's hit song, referencing her iconic music video – more specifically, the second version, which saw the singer wearing the floaty red dress, dancing among woodland. (Laura Jane Turner)
De La Bête aux Fauvettes, l’album dessine un cheminement très personnel. Il débute dans un monde qui heurte le poète, traverse la mélancolie et le temps, avant de trouver dans la poésie une forme de refuge. Éric Cazorla y évoque également Emily Brontë et pose, avec Le Dogme, les valeurs qui nourrissent son écriture. "Cet album de poésies est un dogme où je liste les valeurs que j’épouse et celles que je délaisse", explique-t-il. (Translation)
A new Romanian paper and an Italian Bachelor's thesis:
by Nicoleta-Cosmina IliescuJournal of Romanian Literary Studies 45 (2026), pp 152-159Summary/Abstract: British women's fiction has long provided an important space for questioning dominant assumptions concerning gender, class, and identity. Although Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Virginia Woolf belong to different literary periods, their works share a sustained engagement with the representation of female resistance and the critique of patriarchal structures. This article examines the theoretical relationship between literary subversion and female agency by bringing together the historical contexts in which these writers produced their works and the critical perspectives that have shaped their interpretation. Drawing on feminist literary criticism, together with concepts developed by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the study explores how literary texts challenge dominant ideologies through narrative strategies, representations of femininity, and alternative forms of subjectivity. Rather than viewing subversion solely as explicit opposition to social norms, the article argues that it frequently operates through irony, narrative experimentation, psychological complexity, and the gradual reconfiguration of female identity. By examining the theoretical foundations of British women's fiction, this study highlights the ways in which Austen, the Brontës, and Woolf contributed to a ...
by Constanza ZanettiDipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari - DISLL, 2025Abstract
Analysis of women's writing in nineteenth-century England, relating texts and historical context. An investigation into how economic, political, social, and cultural factors —and the resulting moral and ethical norms— influence the narrative structure of novels and the characterization of female and male characters in selected case studies. An analysis of the nineteenth-century English publishing world, focusing on women writers' practices, strategies, and authorial practices, to assess how material conditions have guided thematic and formal choices.
BBC presenter and author Reeta Chakrabarti's visit to Charlotte Brontë's birthplace has been hailed as a “magical evening”.Guests gathered at the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton on October 17 to hear Ms Chakrabarti discuss her novel, Finding Belle.The book explores mental illness, relationships, marriage and identity, themes which echo parts of Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë wrote the novel nearly 180 years ago. [...]Rosie Preston-Cook, Media and Communications Lead for the Brontë Birthplace, said: "It was an absolutely magical evening. We were so honoured to have someone of Reeta's calibre agree to come to the Birthplace."She was so wonderfully charming and down to earth. It really was a fantastic event and everyone really enjoyed it."Organisers said the visit showed the continuing influence of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.Ms Preston-Cook said: "Having someone like Reeta come to the Birthplace really highlights how influential the Brontë sisters remain to be." (Amelia Short)
Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, released at the beginning of the year, turned Emily Brontë’s novel of brutal abuse and doomed love into a campy BDSM melodrama while clumsily erasing the original’s racial dynamics and insights. Becca Hirani’s Wuthering Heights: House of the Damned doesn’t replicate Fennell’s. It’s, instead, a failure in a completely different, clunkier, but no less thoroughgoing way.For unaccountable reasons, Hirani chose to center the movie on Mr. Lockwood (Ross Townsend-Green) the hapless tenant of Thrushcross Grange. In the novel, Lockwood serves as the oblivious framing narrator of the tragedy of the forbidden love between adopted, racialized Heathcliff (Sky Cheema) and Catherine (Elle O’Hara.) In House of the Damned, though, he’s the main character, and main victim. He visits Wuthering Heights to greet the owner of the land on which he’s situated, is insulted, and then quickly succumbs to the ill influences of Heathcliff’s mansion of spookery.Those spookeries are scattershot and rapidly multiplying, as if Hirani is desperate to let you know that she’s shooting a horror movie here. There are ghosts, serial killers, body horror, nightmare visions, and, in the tradition of Psycho and many another film in the genre, there’s cross-dressing and homosexuality deployed to show Just How Bad Things Have Gotten.It’s possible that Hirani intended to suggest parallels between queer relationships and the forbidden love of Heathcliff and Catherine. But the film is too diffuse and confused to make that metaphor connect. Brontë’s words come out of character’s mouths, expressing the torment and pain of overbearing love. But with so much screentime for the hesitant, snickering, unappealing Lockwood, there’s little space for the movie to describe or illustrate the contours of the relationship that supposedly powers the movie. We don’t see Catherine and Heathcliff’s love develop; we don’t see it sour; we don’t even meet Edward Linton, the man Catherine marries, or understand why he’s attractive to her and simultaneously insufficient.Similarly, maidservant Nelly (Nicola Wright) is robbed of her buried malevolence. Mr. Earnshaw’s (Simon Weir) vacillating altruism and cruelty is approached in only a single, ineffectual scene. As for Heathcliff, he becomes a standard horror villain—unstoppable, mad, and therefore semi-anonymous. He’s less sympathetic and less frightening with his actions divorced from reason and calculation. He’s not a person but a trope, and as a result the (racist) cruelty inflicted upon him, and the cruelty he inflicts, is disconnected from each other and from any real emotional payoff.Wuthering Heights is a complicated novel, whose twisted plot and nested unreliable narration winds around, parallels, and throttles its themes of ingrown passion, strangled desire, self-deception and self-wounding. It’s a much more difficult work to adapt than, say, Jane Austen’s novels, not least because current romcom themes map more easily onto past romance novels than the current horror genre fits into throwback gothic. Translating Emily Brontë into the idiom of present day feature film is no mean feat, and it’s not a surprise that various creators have stumbled in trying.But while the missteps here are understandable, that doesn’t make the movie any more enjoyable. Fans of the original novel will be baffled and frustrated that Hirani doesn’t seem to know who the story’s supposed to be about, much less what to do with it. Fans of horror will be irritated as one hoary cliché after another is wheeled out (the ghost passing in the background when the protagonist is looking the wrong way; the creeping body growths that must be disgustingly popped; the ritual murders) almost at random, with no special innovation or visual panache, much less logic. Maybe someone, someday will manage a Wuthering Heights adaptation worthy of the original. But not this year. (Noah Berlatsky)
Why has romantasy become the biggest literary genre in the world? So popular it is now spilling into television and feature films, with hits such as Heated Rivalry (sporting romance), Wuthering Heights (historical) and The Hunting Wives (steamy contemporary), in a moment The New York Times has described as “smut renaissance”. (Matthew Condon)
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Wed 21 Oct, 7:00pmOnline via zoomIn the shadows of 19th-century domesticity, writers Elizabeth Gaskell and Anne Brontë used the gothic to question the status of powerful and abusive men. Beyond the supernatural, how can we read short stories like The Grey Woman as powerful criticisms of the real monsters in Victorian society?While Elizabeth Gaskell is famous for her social realism, she was also a prolific writer of gothic and supernatural fiction. Ghost stories like The Old Nurse’s Story use eerie atmospheres and psychological terror to explore family relationships and the weight of the past.Anne Brontë shattered the silence of the domestic sphere with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. By depicting a woman’s flight from an abusive marriage and her struggle for financial independence, Brontë replaced spectral horrors with something more terrible, the reality of women’s contemporary status.Join us this Halloween to explore the real monsters and madness hidden in the works of these two groundbreaking women.Speakers:• Dr. Amy L. Montz is Professor of English Literature at the University of Southern Indiana, USA.• Andrew Stodolny is Learning Coordinator, Brontë Parsonage MuseumPart of Short Stories - The Gothic Season and in partnership with Elizabeth Gaskell’s House.
I thought of the spring blooms at Lowood in Jane Eyre, and more generally of the novels of the Brontë sisters, who had lived in the West Riding of Yorkshire and whose novels had accompanied me from my pre-teen years through graduate school and on to a professional life in the academy as a Victorianist. What was clear to me in that post-COVID spring was that the landscape in which the Brontës lived shaped their experience of the natural world and lent specificity to their narratives. A specificity that demanded what I thought of as a kind of field-guide to the novels—what the Victorians called a “flora,” and which in the book excerpted here, I call a botany. (Read more)
Film Threat reviews Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned.Charlotte, the debut novel by Elizabeth Ferris, is a historical reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s life during the turbulent year she wrote Jane Eyre. Facing rejection from publishers, financial pressures, and expectations that women abandon their literary ambitions, Brontë refuses to surrender her dream of becoming a novelist.Ferris is a writer and writing teacher based in West Virginia. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and has taught at the Studio School at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Richmond Young Writers.Charlotte will be published by William Morrow on April 6, 2027, the anniversary of Jane Eyre’s publication. It is available for pre-order now!Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Charlotte, designed by Elsie Lyons. Below, Ferris discusses drawing inspiration from the Brontë Parsonage Museum, incorporating the tools of Charlotte Brontë’s writing life, and how a simple ink blot captures the determination and frustration of one of literature’s most celebrated authors.While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?So much of writing Charlotte was about trying to live inside Charlotte Brontë’s head—seeing through her eyes, feeling through her consciousness. I think I didn’t dare conceive of a cover for fear it would break that spell, make me too self-conscious to take on the task of embodying such an iconic and mused-about author.Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?My editor, Jen, and her assistant Katie asked me to pull together some examples of recent covers I liked, as well as tell them anything I didn’t want in a cover. As a first time author, I was not expecting to be invited to have this much input—it was exciting, but also a bit daunting! We knew we wanted to have some element that gestured at the writing process itself—since the heart of the novel is really Charlotte’s struggle to produce Jane Eyre. It was Jen’s idea to feature a quill. The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth has preserved much of the paraphernalia of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne’s writing life, so we were able to use their photographs as reference. I’m not a visual artist, and I’m a big believer in letting experts do their thing, so I really only had one request: If you do include an image of Charlotte Brontë, don’t make her look too pretty or too docile.What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?It took me a long time to draft Charlotte, including multiple revisions with my agent. I kept expecting each new step of the process to be the one that made it feel “real”—the first meeting with an interested editor, getting the offer, signing the contract, etc. In the end, it was seeing the book cover with the title and my name on it that convinced me I had really written a book and it was going to be published. There was also something full circle about the experience—I wrote a debut novel about Charlotte Brontë writing her debut novel (and like Charlotte I had a previous, unpublished attempt)—so I felt as if I was joining her in the experience of seeing that effort become tangible.How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?I love my cover! I think book covers are a gut thing. Do you want to pick up the book? Does the cover suggest a world you are compelled to enter? The cover Elsie Lyons created feels fresh and feminine, but also like it has the promise of tension and frustration. If there is one word that I would use to describe the Charlotte Brontë I met through my research and that I hoped to make live for readers, it is indefatigable. I love the ink blot that forms the “O” of Charlotte’s name. When I see that ink blot, I see Charlotte—fierce, frustrated, determined. That’s the Charlotte Brontë I fell in love with over the course of writing this book and that I hope the reader will fall in love with, too.What do you think Charlotte Brontë would think about the cover?I’ve thought a lot about what Charlotte Brontë would think of my attempt to represent her—as well as all the adaptations and think pieces about her work and life. My sense is she would be equal parts self-conscious and vindicated. She was someone who both craved recognition and shrank from the idea of exposure. Charlotte’s first creative ambition was actually to be an illustrator, so I think she would appreciate the vividness and intricacy of the patterned background. I suspect she would also love all the small details and flourishes that exist inside the book. This would be familiar to her—while book cover designs were not common in her time, touches of illustration and design inside the pages of a book were.
Hirani at least highlights the most gothic aspect of the Brontë source material: the doomed couple fit only for each other angle. That Heathcliff and Catherine are both far too dark for this world, yet perfect for each other, makes the pair ripe for the Gomez and Morticia treatment. Instead, Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned just makes Heathcliff a psycho prick, and gives us a Catherine who is dead. Also, Townsend-Green strikes exactly the wrong chord by playing Lockwood for laughs. The whole stuffy-as-funny makes his suffering impossible to take seriously. He comes off as a hifalutin Mr. Bill, there for comic relief from watching him get clobbered repeatedly. And I mean repeatedly.The biggest problem with Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned is how it just goes into the murk and stays there. Once it gives you a taste of its brand of cruelty, it repeats the brutality until the clock runs out. It ends up being one note, like toast with too much Vegemite on it. At one point near the end, the audience is treated to squeezing boils FX, in close-up. Imagine the planning and preparation for “Boil Day” in the production, now try to picture how that didn’t send up a warning flare. As Nina Garcia says on those fashion competitions: “Your level of taste concerns me.” Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned ends up being a long slog up and down Buggery Hall until you fall flat. May make a decent sleep aid. (Michael Talbot-Haynes)
Speaking of reading a lot, one thing I loved about this novel is how it’s in conversation with the nineteenth-century novel. There’s a wonderful meta-moment about halfway through that I can’t stop thinking about. Louise senses a sympathetic response from her awful nosy neighbor, and Fremlin compares it to “the warm, genuine sorrow that an author can feel for his heroine when he is about to plunge her into yet worse disaster.” I don’t think I’d be brave enough to include a moment like this, but I love the way that it hearkens back to writers like Trollope, and there are definite Jane Eyre vibes in the ending.Yes, and Greek tragedy is in there too. Throughout the novel, Vera Brandon keeps mentioning Medea, and you could say that in a way, Fremlin was trying to update Medea for the contemporary era. As I said, I don’t know if Fremlin was reading crime fiction when she wrote this book. I think she was just so interested in domestic life and figuring out the darkness that lay not so far beneath the surface, and that was what she was preoccupied with. I think at one point she said that her favorite things were gossip and what people were up to, and just the day-to-day vagaries of life. This was somebody who really drew a lot of inspiration from what we might characterize as “mundane,” but clearly she saw so much rich material to mine in those situations. (Polly Stewart)
“Jane Eyre” has been haunting my life since high school. This may seem strange, but after completing a thesis project on Charlotte Brontë’s novels my senior year, I continue to see its tropes and versions of its characters everywhere. The “crazy first wife” or “madwoman in the attic” trope was popularized by “Jane Eyre” and, despite the changes that the trope has undergone, our culture still appears fascinated with how this trope portrays the dark female psyche. Bertha Mason — Mr. Rochester’s first wife — and Jane provide symbolism and commentary beyond their characters, making the novel compelling even all these years later. However, many modern interpretations often lack this nuance and focus on the “madwoman” aspect to create more thriller-esque works (hello, “Verity”).In “Jane Eyre,” Bertha serves as a dark mirror of Jane and essentially is the hidden and repressed side of Jane’s personality. With Bertha’s desperation to escape the locked attic and cause destruction in Jane’s life at Thornfield Hall, she is the embodiment of the violent and angry parts of Jane that are begging to be seen. While her symbolic existence as Jane’s darkness diminishes her as a character in her own right, it makes for more development of Jane’s characterization, feelings and reactions, stemming from her childhood all the way to becoming Mr. Rochester’s second wife.Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” — a companion novel that serves as a postcolonial critique of “Jane Eyre” — explores Bertha’s marriage to Mr. Rochester, and seeks to correct the lack of characterization that Bertha receives. The book goes a step further by delving into her Creole heritage and implying Mr. Rochester is at fault for the devolution from the bright young woman at the start of the novel to the deranged woman seen in “Jane Eyre.” The relationship between these two books also depicts an aspect of the narrative that is common in modern versions of “the crazy first wife” trope: The husband is usually the driving factor in the wife’s descent into “madness.”While more recent works like “Verity” and “The Housemaid” are both variations of this “madwoman” trope, where the first wife appears “crazy” to the new woman in the house by the admission of the often-suspect husband, they don’t include the original context of having the “madwoman in the attic” as a representation of the darkness within the main protagonist’s psyche. They instead use the mystery surrounding the “crazed” first wife and why she’s locked up as a vehicle for the protagonist’s conflict with the love interest, rather than as an opportunity to explore the dark nature shared between the first wife and the repressed psyche of the protagonist. [...]While I enjoy seeing homages to the beloved “Jane Eyre,” modern media should strive to more wholly incorporate the dark, unpleasant thoughts that are often inherent to womanhood without commiting to demonizing their characters. The internet is obsessed with society’s acceptance, or lack thereof, regarding “complex female characters,” but I hope that we are moving away from separating the “madwoman” from the heroine. (Maeve McGinn)
by Anne MontfortOctober 20-21, 2026Centre Culturel SuïsseQue reste-t-il des grandes passions lorsqu'elles traversent les siècles, les continents et les héritages coloniaux ? En faisant dialoguer Les Hauts de Hurlevent d'Emily Brontë avec La Migration des cœurs de Maryse Condé, cette création réunit cinq comédien·ne·s aux parcours multiples pour faire entendre une histoire où l'amour, la violence et la vengeance se transmettent de génération en génération. Ancrée dans les Caraïbes, la pièce révèle les rapports de domination, de race et de classe déjà timidement présents chez Brontë, tout en laissant les fantômes du passé hanter le présent.
by Emily BrontëAdapted by Gianni ClementiDirected by Francesco Bellomo and Carmine D'AmicsWith Giulio Corso, Federica De Benedittis, Jun Ichikawa, Gabriele Giusti, Shaen Barletta, Massimiliano Vado.October 20-25Teatro Sala Umberto, Via della Mercede, 50, 00187 Roma RM, ItalyUna storia d’amore assoluta e devastante, una relazione profondamente disturbata, quasi ossessiva, immersa in un’atmosfera gotica intensa e visionaria. Ombre, vento, silenzi e spazi sospesi evocano un mondo inquieto e primordiale, dove il paesaggio non è semplice sfondo, ma riflesso vivo dell’anima tormentata dei protagonisti. Le brughiere diventano così un luogo mentale prima ancora che reale: uno spazio emotivo attraversato da desiderio, rabbia, assenza e memoria.Sul palcoscenico prende forma un legame che oggi potremmo definire “tossico”, dominato da una dipendenza emotiva radicale, da ritorni improvvisi, fughe, silenzi e autentici ghosting ante litteram. Heathcliff e Catherine si cercano incessantemente e, nello stesso tempo, si respingono; si desiderano fino all’annientamento e si feriscono con ferocia. Il loro amore non conosce misura né pace: è un sentimento che divora, che consuma, che supera i limiti della morale e perfino quelli della vita stessa.La scena restituisce questa tensione continua attraverso immagini potenti e visionarie, trasformando il sentimento in qualcosa di viscerale, oscuro e inquieto. Il confine tra passione e ossessione si dissolve progressivamente, lasciando emergere una relazione fatta di attrazione magnetica e distruzione reciproca. Ogni gesto, ogni assenza, ogni parola trattenuta amplifica il senso di un amore impossibile da vivere e impossibile da spegnere.Eppure, proprio dentro questa dinamica estrema e dolorosa, si nasconde una verità disarmante: quella tra Heathcliff e Catherine resta, comunque, una delle più grandi storie d’amore mai raccontate. Un amore che sfida il tempo, la morte e le convenzni sociali; un legame che continua a sopravvivere come una ferita aperta, feroce e immortale.Ed è forse proprio questa sua natura contraddittoria — insieme sublime e distruttiva — a renderla ancora oggi così contemporanea, necessaria e profondamente uiomana.
Haworth MoorStart/finish: Haworth / Hebden BridgeDistance: 12.5 miles [...]Take a bus from hip Hebden Bridge to hilltop Haworth – where the Brontë sisters lived – and walk back. You get literary shivers: from Haworth’s Brontë Museum, you’re soon up on wild, windy Haworth Moor, heading for the ruined farmhouse of Top Withens, possible inspiration for Wuthering Heights. Then you get a bit of wild Pennine Way, via heathery uplands and the Walshaw Dean reservoirs. Then the world changes completely, as you descend into the enchanted, river-tinkled gorge of Hardcastle Crags. (Sarah Baxter)
Quick lightning round! Tell us: [...][The book] that you can’t stop thinking about: Wuthering Heights (Elise Dumpleton)
by Dr. Pankaj YadavIntegral Research, 3(9), 27-37 (2026) https://doi.org/10.57067/Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a book that doesn't fit neatly into the typical Victorian love story category. When people adapt the book into movies or plays, they often focus on the intense relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, making it seem like a classic romance. But this overlooks the dark themes of violence, mental abuse and revenge that run throughout the novel. This study looks at how Brontë challenges traditional ideas of romantic love, turning passion into a driving force that consumes everything in its path. By exploring different viewpoints, including feminist, psychological and philosophical perspectives, we can see that desire in Wuthering Heights is not about romantic harmony, but rather a rebellion against the societal norms of the time. It's a powerful force that destroys not just the individuals involved, but also the world around them. In dismantling the division between self and other, the desire of Catherine and Heathcliff manifests as psychic fragmentation, necrophilic dissolution, imperialist appropriation of property and bodies. The novel illustrates that when desire demands absolute transcendence beyond social, physical and metaphysical limits, it inevitably consummates itself in annihilating violence, leaving genuine reconciliation to the domestic and subdued realm of the next generation.
Also leeching away any sense of feeling is the director’s insistence on shooting many indoor scenes with natural lighting. Cinematographer Arnaud Potier casts a pall over every room, shadows dominating at times, giving forth the impression we’ve wandered into Emily Bronte territory and are watching “Wuthering Heights” instead. Visual bridges of spider’s spinning webs, quiet views of meadows and other esoteric matters go a long way toward underscoring the languid pacing of an ordinary day in the early 19th century. However, they contribute nothing to the narrative momentum. (Chuck Koplinski)
Jane Eyre 2011¡Mi preferida aunque no sea una película de terror al 100%! Esta adaptación dirigida por Cary Joji Fukunaga tiene todos los ingredientes para conquistar a las amantes de la época victoriana y del romance gótico.Mia Wasikowska interpreta a Jane, una joven institutriz que se enamora del enigmático Mr. Edward Rochester, interpretado por Michael Fassbender. Entre historias de fantasmas, secretos familiares y ruidos extraños en Thornfield Hall, esta historia es la de un amor que va más allá de la propia carne. (Aura Carpio) (Translation)
Presentada por el cineasta en el Festival de Sitges, la película llegará a España de la mano de Filmin y de Elastica Films. En Sitges, el público la recibía con una ovación y una presentación que la señalaba como la respuesta queer a Cumbres borrascosas, en referencia a la adaptación de la novela de Emily Brontë que, a inicios de este año, protagonizaban Jacob Elordi y Margot Robbie. (Miguel Ángel Romero) (Translation)
by Niall GildeaEnglish Studies, 1–21 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2026.2742213The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’s narrative structure has been a consistent and prominent focus of the novel's reception. What these readings have in common is that they see as the novel’s structure tout court a particular rendition of its structure, namely that it comprises two letters from Gilbert Markham to his brother-in-law, Jack Halford, the second of which transcribes and encloses a journal spanning six years, written by the novel's titular tenant, Helen Graham. Conventionally, interpretations of this structure have considered the function of the enclosure of Helen's narrative by Gilbert's. This article argues that another reading of the novel’s form is available, whereby it may be shown to have a latent triplicate textual and metatextual structure, where no single element predominates. This enables a reading of Tenant as an ethicising of writing as a form of necessarily incomplete labour, aiding our understanding of its important political and theological dimensions.
While I applaud the avid creativity it took to make the classic romance into a supernatural horror, the film’s lack of fleshed out thoughts left me wanting more.This spooky retelling takes place after the events of the original story have concluded. Spoiler alert - Heathcliff’s lover, Catherine (Elle O’Hara), died tragically in childbirth and Heathcliff is beside himself. However, the haunting reimagining begins here, when Healthcliff (Sky Cheema) raises Catherine’s spirit and, essentially, damns her to an eternity in the Wuthering Heights estate. We then fast forward to a new face, a landlord named Lockwood (Ross Townsend-Green), who travels to the estate to greet Heathcliff for the first time. Alas, this visit will prove to be detrimental to Lockwood’s physical and mental wellbeing. He begins seeing visions of a veiled woman wandering the halls, and having nightmares about horrific things happening in the estate. His visions, though completely outlandish on the surface, appear to come true, and Lockwood suspects that Heathcliff may be hiding a terrifying secret.For starters, I must say that this is not a direction I ever imagined Brontë’s dark romance story going. I applaud the creativity it took to combine a well-known classic with a supernatural horror element; the novelty of this genre helps it stand out amongst larger features. However, the way that the horror is executed throughout The House of the Damned is frankly unimpressive. The story spends a lot of time using flashbacks that call out the original story, which serves as a good reminder at times, but impairs the viewer’s ability to engage with the new elements of the story. It was also difficult to ignore the frequent use of jump scares, many of which occurred in a similar pattern: Lockwood awakes at night and wanders the house, and then he sees a terrible image of a bloodied woman in a mirror or something. The scare factor wears off after the first two attempts, and after that it becomes a bore.The repetitive nature of many of this film’s plot aspects are truly what holds it back from being a semi-decent horror-classic twist. As with the jump scares, so many of the novel ideas in this film are clouded by attempts to copy the style and feel of other writers. The dialogue (especially during the flashbacks) at times felt like it was pulled directly from the original novel, which typically would not be a point to critique, but it often felt clunky and out of place. The actor’s actual delivery of the lines sounded almost Shakespearean, which took me out of the horror more than once while watching. Not to mention, the accents the actors were forced to put on were painful to the ears, especially Catherine’s and Cathy’s (Anna Coupe). The delivery of these accents paired with the overdramatic dialogue created a dynamic that is typically only seen in community theater. The ideas behind The House of the Damned are refreshing in the horror world, but these ideas were buried by an attempt to fit in with the crowd.Wuthering Heights: The House Of The Damned feels more like a sketch than a completed work of art, but I truly admire the real attempts made in The House of the Damned to create something unique that still recalls an original story. I think it’s safe to say that, despite its flaws, this film ultimately took me on a different journey than I expected to go on. I hope to see more films like this in the future, perhaps not with fake British accents. (Heidi Krull)
The characters and some similar plot points are here, but they are twisted into more overt horror archetypes. The foundation of this movie is in Heathcliff’s mission of killing people as sacrifices in an attempt to bring Catherine back to life. From the write-ups I’ve read, it sounds like the movie mostly adapts parts of the second half of the book. But, again, it’s all twisted up in blood and gore. (Chris Catt)
The House of the Damned has a few great ideas, but it lacks the creative inspiration to execute them well. Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has absolutely no ideas, but it’s way too busy masturbating to care. I’ve been in both camps — especially the second one — and I honestly can’t tell you which one is better. ( Rob DiCristino)
The result is a film that respects the atmosphere and emotional foundations of its literary inspiration while gleefully embracing the possibilities of horror filmmaking.There are moments of genuine unease, moments of unexpected humor, and moments of gloriously excessive practical gore. But beneath those pleasures is a thoughtful appreciation for the craft of filmmaking, evident in the relationship between camera movement, editing, production design, costume, performance, music, and sound.Rebecca J. Matthews has found a wonderfully wicked way to breathe new life—and perhaps a little undead life—into Wuthering Heights. And damned if it isn’t fun! (Debbie Elias)
I have always been a Brontë girl rather than an Austen one — it is not really something that I have to think about; the dreamy, desolate moors excite me much more than Jane Austen's books, where one very acclaimed, very viral review stated that the her novels were only about going to each other's houses.Charlotte Brontë too thought that Austen's works were devoid of warmth, enthusiasm and deep emotion, stating that 'the passions are deeply unknown to her'.I confess, I had arrived to the same conclusion in different words. Austen wasn't for me, she lacked the fiery passion of Wuthering Heights, the fierce steadfastness of Jane Eyre and the determination of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I first encountered Pride and Prejudice in the second year of university and I did enjoy it, but I loved how my teacher taught it more than the actual experience of reading the novel. Her prose often felt too stiff, and the characters too restrained. (Treya Sinha)
3. MarianneAusten’s Marianne is certainly passionate, romantic, and sensitive, but the new film (played by Esmé Creed-Miles) takes her wildness to another level. Instead of a spirited young woman navigating the restrictions of polite Regency society, she often feels like she’s one minor inconvenience away from running barefoot into the woods. Hard relate, but not the time and place.And that distinction matters. Austen’s heroines are daughters of gentlemen. They’re ladies, and they exist within a very specific social world — one governed by manners, money, reputation, and, of course, the marriage market. Marianne may push against those rules, but she’s still a product of them.In this adaptation, though, that carefully constructed social world sometimes feels like an afterthought. We get less of the young woman trying to reconcile her romantic ideals with the expectations placed upon her, and more barefoot-in-the-woods Marianne. It’s giving Emily Brontë’s Cathy. (Fleurine Tideman)
And Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre has inspired well over twenty movies and series, including a whole slate of silent films from the 1910s. Something about these nineteenth-century novels has kept each new generation of filmmakers coming back. Perhaps they are uniquely timeless in some way; maybe they are simply in the public domain. [...]We’re entering something of an adaptation renaissance. The last time this happened was around 1995, a period known as “Austenmania,” when it seemed like all of Jane Austen’s novels were hitting the big screen at once. Now, thirty years later, following the commercial success of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights—which raked in over $80 million (US) globally on its opening weekend—a slate of new nineteenth-century adaptations is set to be released. [...]A currently under-production series will see Aimee Lou Wood portray Jane Eyre. [...]In an essay for The New Yorker on Fennell’s remake of Wuthering Heights, which has been adapted over thirty times, film critic Richard Brody contends that novels are not harmed by sloppy adaptations because “even the worst filmmakers aren’t burning the books, just misunderstanding them.” In other words, a bad adaptation doesn’t alter the text of its source material. As long as the great novel that inspired the shoddy film can still be checked out at the library, then no harm no foul, right?It depends on who you ask. The most popular review for the film on Letterboxd (an online platform for rating and discussing movies, frequented by annoying people such as myself) reads: “emily brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.” Sure, hyperbole is the language of the internet, but over 100,000 people have liked this review, signalling some level of agreement with the idea that a bad adaptation isn’t just disappointing or aesthetically displeasing but actually offensive.The other school of thought, of course, is that “Wuthering Heights is SO good when you don’t have an English major in your ear telling you it’s nothing like the book.” That’s a post on X with almost 10,000 likes and over 5 million views. And while Brody doesn’t seem to agree that the film is “SO good,” he does put forward his own version of this sentiment. “Rushing to defend a literary source against a supposed cinematic mauling,” he says, “is often little more than an attempt to signal culturedness and education.” Books don’t need protecting, Brody suggests. Only our fragile egos do.Is that true? Is a bad adaptation a victimless crime? I can tell you that there was at least one victim of Fennell’s adaptation: me. I saw the film in theatres with friends when it came out. I’ve been a fan of the Brontë sisters since before I outgrew young adult novels, but I figured that, even if Fennell’s movie presented a shallower version of the story, it would at least be fun. Reader, it was not.But those are the stakes of making any movie: you might bore people, or irritate people, or offend people. But you’re not usually accused of making “the worst thing that has ever happened” to Emily Brontë or to anyone else. What, then, are the stakes of a bad adaptation? [...]And for what it’s worth, the posters for Fennell’s Wuthering Heights self-consciously place the title in scare quotes, signalling an emphasis on Fennell’s personal interpretation of the text, rather than fidelity to Emily Brontë’s original writing. [...]And, despite being based on a novel about abuse and trauma, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights was marketed as an adaptation of “the greatest love story of all time.” The film, which replaces class and race with sex and angst at every turn, has been dubbed the “smooth-brained” version of the novel.No book exemplifies the tension between surface text and subtext better than Charlotte Brontë’s 1849 novel Shirley, a brilliant novel but perhaps too bloated and unwieldy to ever receive a Netflix adaptation. Set against the backdrop of the Luddite riots, the novel follows two young women navigating love and friendship as their small Yorkshire town undergoes a period of rapid technological change. At the end of the novel, the titular Shirley accepts a marriage proposal from a man. This is hardly a “spoiler”; marriage was basically a necessity for any young female protagonist written in 1849. While Shirley’s story hits the beats of the marriage plot, suggesting a romantic conclusion on the surface, Brontë’s word choices imply an unhappier ending. Images of captivity haunt the language of the novel’s final pages; Shirley is “fettered,” “conquered,” “bound with a vow.” The surface text may follow the rules, but the subtext protests them—loudly. It’s no wonder that Shirley hasn’t received a big budget adaptation in over a hundred years. [...]Shortly after watching Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation, I encountered a woman who told me that her adult daughter had watched the movie in theatres and loved it, having never heard of the book. This unsettled me. Maybe Wuthering Heights really is SO good without the English major in your ear. But, now, when people think of Heathcliff—who is coded as a person of colour in the novel and who experiences racist abuse at the hands of his older brother—they might be picturing Jacob Elordi. Surely something has been lost. (Amarah Hasham-Steele)
‘Jane Eyre’ (2011)Cary Joji Fukunaga directs this adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 gothic romance novel. Mia Wasikowska portrays the orphaned governess Jane Eyre, who secures employment at Thornfield Hall under the service of the brooding Edward Rochester. Jane and Rochester develop a mutual affection, but dark secrets within the estate threaten their potential future together. Michael Fassbender co-stars in a narrative framed through non-linear flashbacks that highlight themes of class division, moral integrity, and resilience. (Arthur S. Poe)
Adapting a novel for a dynamic theatrical production presents a unique challenge. For director Jin Shengquan, the key lay in capturing Jane's rich inner life and translating her psychological journey into striking visual and musical language."When reading the novel, what stands out most is Jane's attitude toward the world. She is a woman with a rich, full inner life," Jin, who also plays Edward Rochester, told CGTN. "The biggest challenge for the stage was finding a way to externalize those internal thoughts and emotions. That led us to put Jane’s personal growth at the absolute center of our adaptation."To bring her internal conflict into sharp relief, the production introduces a creative recurring device: an "inner courtroom." In these stylized sequences, Jane faces trial under the absurd charge of "seeking affection" or "falling in love." Through resisting these voices of judgment – both external social expectations and her own internal self-doubt – Jane gradually breaks free, realizing her independence.Rather than producing a faithful Victorian period piece, the creative team deliberately localized and modernized the narrative to resonate deeply with today's Chinese audience."When interpreting a classic work like this, we must bring our own perspective," Jin explained. "We didn't want audiences to feel a sense of distance – whether from a Western literary classic or a Victorian setting."This contemporary lens dynamically reshapes the story's classic archetypes. The religious austerity of St. John is softened to reveal his human vulnerability and suppressed personal desires.Meanwhile, Edward Rochester sheds some of his traditional darkness and aggression; in an edgy modern twist, he makes his entrance riding a scooter and delivering lines through hip-hop, making his character arc and bond with Jane more relatable to contemporary viewers.Even Rochester's faithful dog, Pilot, is brought to life by a human actor whose physical performance and animalistic movement design add a vibrant, humorous energy to the stage.For lead actress Guo Yaorong, who first read Jane Eyre under her blanket as a middle school student, stepping into Jane's shoes revealed deeper layers to the iconic character."Through portraying her inner world on stage, I discovered a side of her that is sensitive, fearful, and at times unsure of how to face the world," Guo said. "Jane Eyre is a story people can truly relate to. Whatever you go through, you need to hold on to your principles, make your own choices, and set your own goals."Asked what Jane Eyre would be like if she lived in 2026, Guo believes she wouldn't necessarily be a celebrated figure. "She might just be an ordinary young woman – stubborn, staying true to her heart, particularly in her career, and living an ordinary life like anyone else."The enduring relevance of Jane Eyre in modern China – where it remains on the Ministry of Education's required reading list for students – underscores the universal power of world literature."A literary classic is a classic because it transcends national borders, languages, and generations," Jin noted. "In the global landscape of culture, we should embrace greater integration and mutual appreciation."At its core, this Chinese adaptation strip away historical distance to honor the timeless quest for self-actualization. As the musical's central anthem boldly proclaims: "I don't need to be defined. I will be myself." (Guo Meiping)
This moody gothic earns all the back-cover comparisons to Rebecca and Jane Eyre, and then some! Set in Nigeria during the lead-up to civil war, The Water House follows a reform school graduate, drifting through life and fake-engaged to a brooding widower; when scandalous revelations put an end to her relationship, she returns to her family home, a decaying estate concealing a terrible secret. (Molly Odintz)
This is a long novel, ostensibly comprised of 11 short novels, but what makes it so propulsive are the tendrils of detail that fasten each section to the next. The author presents 11 characters from birth to death, every one in some way connected to the Drayden sisters, born in a Yorkshire village in the early years of the 19th century, the daughters of a taciturn parson. Their short lives are distinguished by tragedy, but also by tremendous creativity. They each write and publish a single novel and are recognised, though fleetingly, as authors of talent and promise.If this sounds familiar, it’s because The Song of Stork and Dromedary is based on the story of the Brontë sisters. Although it ought to feel strange that it was originally written in Dutch while being set predominantly in England, this is not so; such is the skill of the author, as well as the proficiency and dynamism of the translation by David McKay. (Sara Baume)
The countryside in Austen’s novels is “an empty pastoral landscape” in which members of the gentry can roam, flirt and picnic. In Jane Eyre, by contrast, it is busy with working people of a different socioeconomic class to Charlotte Brontë’s heroine. Of the book’s 71 speaking characters, 22 aren’t named. This, allied to the impersonal, transactional exchanges that “orphaned, friendless, solitary” Jane has with these coachmen, ostlers and shopkeepers, captures the indifference of the modern, commercial world. Interestingly, Menon posits that in a narrative about someone trapped by their situation, this kind of alienation might also be liberating. (Chris Power)
The Brontë Sisters UK publishes a video about Jane Eyre 1973.
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